The Attic (a name which commemorates our first physical location) is, first and foremost, a site for the research students of the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester: a virtual community which aims to include all students, be they campus-based and full-time, or distance-learning and overseas. But we welcome contributions from students of museum studies - and allied subject areas - from outside the School and from around the world. Here you will find a lot of serious stuff, like exhibition and research seminar reviews, conference alerts and calls for papers, but there's also some 'fluff'; the things that inspire, distract and keep us going. After all, while we may be dead serious academic types, we're human too.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Of interest to some?

ACAH2014 - The Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities3rd
to 6th April 2014Osaka, Japan

The International Academic Forum in partnership with Waseda University (Japan), Birkbeck University of London (UK), The National Institute of Education (Singapore), The National University of Tainan (Taiwan), Lincoln University (UK), the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKSAR), Virginia Tech (USA), Auburn University (USA), and its global partners is proud to announce the Fifth Annual Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities, to be held from April 3-6 2014, at the Rihga Royal Hotel, and The Osaka International Conference Center, Osaka, Japan.

Hear the latest research, publish before a global audience, present in a supportive environment, network, engage in new relationships, experience Japan, explore Osaka and Kyoto, join a global academic community...

Join us as we celebrate the 5th Anniversary of the Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities, and explore new avenues of interdisciplinary study in the wonderfully rich physical and cultural environment of Japan. This international conference will again bring together university scholars working throughout Japan, Asia, and beyond to share ideas and forge working relationships with each other over a stimulating, challenging, and fun long weekend.

Conflict from earliest times has been a characteristic of the human condition. The struggle between our individual selves and our social selves arises from what makes us unique on the one hand, being challenged by our being part of an interdependent structure of relationships on the other.

The specific blend of experiences, abilities, attitudes, and aspirations, that helps to define us, can sit sometimes uncomfortably alongside our commitments to those closest to us, our communities and our cultures. This can lead to conflict at different levels.

Conflict within communities and societies is inevitable given that these groups are based on commonality of geography, values, attitudes, and beliefs that help to differentiate one from another. The dialectic engendered by diversity, however, although it may lead to conflict, can play an important role in the expansion of ideas in communities and societies. One major challenge of modern society is to harness the synergy that emerges from the interactive dialectic generated by these differences.

The Arts and Humanities have long recognized these differences and frictions when they try to explain conflict through the systematic exploration of ideas, words, and artistic expression. By proposing such a wide-ranging 2014 conference theme, the organizers hope to encourage exciting new avenues of research, inspire the creation of new explanatory concepts, and provide a context for academic and personal encounters. The resultant exchanges it is hoped will stimulate synergies that cross national, religious, cultural and disciplinary divides. This is central to the global vision of iafor.

Publishing Opportunities:Authors of Accepted Abstracts will have the opportunity of publishing their associated paper in the official conference proceedings, and a selection of papers will be considered for inclusion in the internationally peer-reviewed IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities.For more information about the journal and to see our latest issue, please visit www.iafor.org

The International Academic Forum - A Global Academic PartnershipIAFOR works with our university partners to nurture and encourage the best in international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research. We work with senior administrators and professors in our partner institutions to develop programs which are timely, thought-provoking and academically rigorous. The global partnership alliance means that our interdisciplinary conferences are backed by some of the world's foremost institutions of learning. For more information about IAFOR, please visit our website at www.iafor.org

LibrAsia2014ACAH 2014 will be held alongside the fourth Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship - LibrAsia 2014, and registrants for either conference will be given the opportunity to attend sessions in the parallel event at no extra charge. Please click on the banner to go to the LibrAsia 2014 sister site.

DAMIN2014The Fifth Conference on the Arts and Humanities is happy to host the 2014 DAMIN Round Table (When Orient and Occident Meet) as part of the conference. DAMIN is an international research partnership studying Silver Monentary Depreciation and International Relations. The International Academic Forum is a partner organization, and others include the National Center for Scientific Research - CNRS (France), The Ecole Normale Superieure (France), The National Museum of Denmark, The Financial University (Russia), The Far Eastern Federal University (Russia), Tokyo University (Japan), and Keio University (Japan).

ACAH/LibrAsia Conference Chair - Stuart D. B. Picken

Stuart D. B. Picken is the founding chairman of the IAFOR International Advisory Board. The author of a dozen books and over 130 articles and papers, he is considered one of the foremost scholars on Japan, China, and Globalization in East Asia.

As an academic, Professor Picken has devoted more than 30 years to scholarship in Japan, notably as a professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, where he specialized in ethics and Japanese thought, and as International Adviser to the High Priest of Tsubaki Grand Shrine (Mie prefecture). He has also served as a consultant to various businesses, including Jun Ashida Ltd., Mitsui Mining and Smelting Corp., Kobe Steel, and Japan Air Lines.

In November 2008, the Government of Japan awarded Professor Picken the Order of the Sacred Treasure for his pioneering research, and outstanding contribution to the promotion of friendship and mutual understanding between Japan and the UK. The honour is normally reserved for Japanese citizens and is a mark of the utmost respect in which Professor Picken is held by the Japanese Government. Although now resident in Scotland, Professor Picken maintains his interests in Japan, as Chair of the Japan Society of Scotland, and through his work with IAFOR. A fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, he lives near Glasgow with his wife and two children.

DAMIN Conference Chair - Georges Depeyrot

Georges Depeyrot is a monetary historian at the French National Center for Scientific Research, (CNRS) in Paris. He began his scientific career in the 1970's studying coin finds and joined the CNRS in 1982. After some years he joined the Center for Historical Research in the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and is now a professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure.

After his habilitation (1992), he specialized in international cooperative programs that aim to reconsider monetary history in a global approach. He has directed many cooperative programs linking several European countries, including those situated at the continentâ 셲 outer borders (Georgia, Armenia, Russia, and Morocco).

Professor Depeyrot is the author or coauthor of more than one hundred volumes, and is the founding director of the Moneta publishing house, the most important collection of books on the topic of money (www.moneta.be). Aside from the continuation of the studies in the field of Ancient coin finds, his current program of study is concentrated on the history of the 19th century monetary unification and crises, in cooperation with European countries, Russia and Japan as part of the DAMIN research group on silver monetary depreciation and international relations (ANR 2011 BSH3 008 01). For more information on DAMIN, please see the website at www.anr-damin.net.

Professor Depeyrot is a member of the board of trustees of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.

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PhD Conferences

We have a new PhD conference upcoming this year November 5-6th 2013. It is called Museum Metamorphosis and is all about the adaptable and changing museums of today. We are sponsored by AHRC and in partnership with Leicester Museums. The official website and details can be found here.

Last year's PhD student conference was held March 27-28 2012, and was titled Museum Utopias; it was supported by the University of Leicester and Hanwell. It was an intreguing two days of utopic ideals and realities in museums today. Details are available on the official website. Read the blog for a session-by-session review of the conference.

The 2011 conference was held in Leicester March 28-30, and was called Curiouser & Curiouser; supported financially by the University of Leicester, it was an exciting three days of the weird and wonderful in heritage studies. Read the blog to find out more. We also held a highly successful PhD student symposium in December 2009. Read the blog.